America’s not becoming polarized, as is so often repeated in the media. In truth, America’s becoming bi-polarized.
America was born with one coalition: property-owning white men. There were no other coalitions, no other voices, no other perspectives or participants in the determining of the nation and its constitution.
A coalition of one — then there’s everybody else, whose entire existence is pre-determined, ruled and regulated by property-owning white males.
A kingdom without kings
After invading and conquering the Native Americans and their lands in the name of the English king, the white men who claimed ownership of the property went to war with that king for the right to have a kingdom without kings, replaced by property-owning white men who would rule the land instead.
From day one, this new kingdom without a king — ruled by a coalition of property-owning white men — was beset by insurgents who also insisted on equality and self-determination. But the only way to get those things was to crack the coalition. Change the game. Become a game changer.
Cracking the coalition
But changing the game has been a deadly game, it and of itself, because change can only come at the political and economic expense of the sole coalition in the kingdomless kingdom.
The America of 1776 was a coalition of property-owning white men who fought for and gained 100% control of the land.
The democracy America created in 1776 was a democracy for 100% of property-owning white men and 0% of everyone else.
Since then, everyone else has been trying to get a piece of that American pie, that 100%, to be represented, acknowledged, to have a say, a vote, to mean something, to be a voice, a perspective, a participant in the determining of the nation and its constitution. To truly be an American.
Since then, property-owning white men have been unwilling to give up 100% control of the country without a fight, a movement, a war, a crusade, a struggle.
As fate — and everyone else — would have it, everyone else was willing to fight for their freedoms, too, and now, in the early part of the 21st century, America has sifted like sand through the hourglass into two camps.
- The property-owning white men still unwilling to give up whatever percentage of control of the country they have without a fight, a movement, a war, a crusade, a struggle.
- And everybody else, who, in one way, shape or form, don’t see the world from the point of view of a property-owning white man who has no idea what it’s like being non-white in America, and whose perspective resembles that of our forefathers (who thought so well of the people within its borders, they decided the only people whose interests really mattered were property-owning white men).
But in a kingdom without kings, anyone truly can become president, given time, fate and human willpower.
Is that truly what those original property-owning white men wanted?
Or has everyone else simply co-op’ed the notion of freedom and self-determination?
America has coalesced into two camps, or poles. Call them north and south. And call the world between frantic, chaotic, churning, hysterical, turning itself inside out, reeling, transforming itself — all in response to the shift of the country’s magnetic compass from one pole to the other.
Similar to the planet itself, which is coincidentally also shifting its magnetic poles at this very moment.
And there’s nothing anyone can do to stop either phenomenon.
But take heart. America won’t remain bipolar for long. 🙂
Randy Boyd author 